"He wrote in
his log of 'piercing the White Veil'...and landing on the 'Beach of the
Skull' where he heard the 'roar of the Greatest Beast'."

Just as Bogie never really
said "Play it again, Sam", in neither
the 1933 nor the 1976 version of King
Kong does anyone refer to "Skull
Island".

For all the barbs hurled at King
Kong 1976, the critics were grudgingly
complimentary over two aspects of the film. John Barry's
intricate and haunting musical score; and the pristine, primordial
beauty
of "Skull Island". The latter fact should come as no
surprise. The Skull Island beach scene was filmed on the
incredibly rugged
Na Pali North Shore, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai -- a nearly
inaccessible area which, before and after, did similar duty for
several
Hollywood productions, including South
Pacific, Raiders of the Lost
Art, 6 Days/7 Nights
(Harrison Ford and Anne Heche) and the TV series Acapulco Heat.

Specifically, King Kong 1976
was filmed on Honopu Beach, an almost
impossibly magical section of the Na Pali coast that comprises two deep
golden beaches separated by a colossal natural stone arch, and a slim,
shimmering waterfall just beyond the arch, all of which elements
featured prominently in King Kong
1976.

Honopu means "Conch Shell", although tourists called the beach
"Cathedral Beach", and at one time it was a sacred meeting
place for Hawaiian royalty (Ali'i) as well as a sacred burying ground
for their families. The family members carried the bones of their
deceased relatives as far up the mountain as they could get, then
interred them in the caves. As a result, the area is still sacred
today and you are only supposed to visit it by swimming. At
least that's the theory. Clearly they made an exception for film
crews.

If you're looking for King Kong 1976
trivia, here's one for you.
Everyone knows that Kong's island was called Skull Island, right?
Wrong. Just as Bogie never really said "Play it again, Sam", in
neither the 1933 nor the 1976 version of King Kong does anyone refer to
"Skull Island". Not even in the 1933 novelization. In the
1933 film, there is a distinctive rocky knoll in the middle of the
island roughly shaped like a skull. Carl Denham points this out
to Ann Darrow and she says: "Oh yes,
I remember you telling me. Skull Mountain." (In the
1933 novelization, the map is described as depicting "a high wooded island with a skull-like
knob...", and Denham cries out: "Skull Mountain!" on sighting the
island.)

But King Kong 1976 was even
more oblique. There is no
reference at all to
either Skull Island or Skull Mountain in the '76 remake, but Jack
quotes "Pero Fernando de Quieros", who in 1605 was blown south from the
Tuamotu Archipelago, when he passed through the fogbank
surrounding
the island and landed on the "Beach of the Skull".

Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s screenplay describes the satellite image shown by
Roy
Bagley as depicting, from directly overhead, "a varicolored but sharply defined mass
shaped roughly like a human skull." But how De Quieros
could know that, and so name the Beach accordingly, surpasses
understanding. Anyway, those directions were clearly
abandoned by
Guillermin because the satellite image doesn't look much like a
skull. So, that description and the "Beach of the Skull" line are
the closest we get
to a "Skull Island" in Kong '76. It would be fascinating to know
when the
confusion first came about.

Beyond the arch, there is
danger, there is Kong!

Although the Kong '76 film
crew were told Honopu Beach was remote,
nearly inaccessible and isolated, the day they arrived in their
helicopters and set down on the supposedly isolated beach, they found a
pair of bemused honeymooners already there, no doubt thinking they had
finally escaped all the hustle and bustle of the city, only to be
invaded by an army of Hollywood types.

Scenes of the boats passing through the fogbank were shot on nearby
Hanalei Bay, where several huge fog making machines mounted on boats
were used to lay down a real fogbank.

Both the colossal stone arch and the waterfall beyond featured in King
Kong '76. (But this is not the same waterfall
where Kong gives Dwan her shower and hair dry. That was a studio
sound stage.) The arch especially played a deceptively important
part. It is so huge, during the filming of one episode of the TV
series Acapulco Heat, pilot
Red Johnson flew a helicopter underneath
it. (For size comparison to a person, click on the second picture on this page
to expand it. The person is the tiny thing in the very middle of
the arch. You'll have to squint!)

Director Guillermin used the arch as a sort of doorway into his
movie. I recall, watching King
Kong '76 as a kid, believing that
our heroes (and Wilson) were safe from Kong so long as they were on
this side of the arch. And so Guillermin obviously intended it to
be, as he shows Jack and Dwan frolicking in the misty spray from the
surf and Wilson looking ridiculous as he wades pompously ashore.
But as soon as Dwan passes under the arch? The mood changes and
Jack rushes after her, chewing her out for going off on her own.
Beyond the arch, there is danger, there is Kong! It is as if
there were a sign posted above the arch that reads, "Abandon hope, all
ye who enter here..."

At the same time, the arch also fits in with the screenwriter's theory
(explained in
his preface found on this site). To make the fantasy work,
Lorenzo Semple Jr. explained that he began with a very realistic
reality -- an oil company setting to sea -- then uses the discovery of
the beautiful girl in a liferaft -- a more fantastical element -- to
prepare us for the really fantastic stuff yet to come...Kong! In
the same way, the arch, although real, appears so fantastic, it too
functions to prepare us for weirder stuff to come. Like the
mirror in Alice through the
Looking Glass, it is like a door, not just to the other side of
the beach, but to another world...the
world of Skull Island!